What are the differences between a teaser trailer and a theatrical trailer?

TEASER TRAILER




We can see that in this trailer nothing of the plot is given away, it firstly shows footage from the first movie and how it was a such a phenomanon that a sequel was demanded, and this clip also shows reaction from the audience, which theatrical trailers don't.
Also, another feature of this trailer is that it doesn't give a date as to when it will hit box offices it just tells you what the name is and where you can go to research it. I think this trailer can get away with it because of the sheer amount of hype that came after the first one was released. In teaser trailers the plot is nearly never told, it relys on the audience to piece together what may or is happening.




THEATRICAL TRAILER



In this trailer, we see a substaitial amount more than the teaser trailer, it gives away plenty of the plot to show a basic idea of what the film is about and to introduce us to the main protaganist and supposed villians.
Also, the idea that this is a theatrical trailer means that the time that the trailer is to be shown must be longer than a teaser trailer so that the audience can dip thier toes in and know enough to want to see it.
Also, at the end we see the intertitles "This Year The Battles Comes To Earth" at the end spaced out in frames, this could be used as the films tagline and also uses a pragmatic on what genre of film this is (if you didn't get it from the films visuals", it also ends giving us the name of the film "THOR". Thor is known mainly for being the Norse God of lightining but this Thor has been adapted by Marvel many years ago so Marvel film buffs and fans will alreday know what the film will be about, but for the lesser audience who don't they have to gove away enough drama and action to make them interested which is very common in all theatrical trailers.

How Are Women Represented In Horror?



Consumer?



Domestic?

Familial?



Sexual?



"The final girl is a thriller and horror film (particularly slasher film) trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween^[1], Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hellraiser, Alien and Scream. The term was coined ^[2] by Carol J. Cloverin her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.^[3] Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film." --Wikipedia, 07/04/2011

We watched three horror films over the course of this term, they were:

1. Halloween (1978-Dir. John Carpenter)
2. The Shining (1980-Dir. Stanley Kubrick)
3. Eden Lake (2008-Dir. James Watkins)

We can see in the three films how the "final girl" is portrayed.

In The Shining and Halloween both the final girls are androgynous, as in the sense that they are not girly girls who will keep an eye on their appearance but will often cover up most of their body. In The Shining Wendy wears a long sleeved turtle-neck jumper and a very long skirt with tights, Laurie wears high waisted trousers and a monotone jumper, so we can see that neither of them vocalise's their sexuality to the audience.

However, in Eden Lake Jenny is put into a more voyeuristic view for the audience. She often is shown wearing her bikini whilst sun bathing, we are even put into the eyes of Brett staring at Jennies breasts through some binoculars but within her realising that she is being seen in this way she covers herself up so we are then made to feel perverse.

Whereas in Halloween Annie, Lynda and Judith are not cautious of who they are being seen by and in result of this are killed, Lynda is killed after she has had sex with her boyfriend because from the distraction of sex she is not aware of Mike Myers presence. Annie is killed after parading round in a shirt and underwear which Mike Myers was attracted to because of how he killed his sister Judith. Laurie however does not die in this film, she is baby sitting her neighbors so she takes on a familial role, she moves the narrative forward with curiosity, and out of all the women in the film she seems to be the most virginal and doesn't explore sexuality.

It is often come across that horror takes a conservative view on sex out of wed-lock, that if you have sex you WILL die, so whenever a androgynous female is presented you can usually tell that she will be the final girl.

In The Shining the first scene we see with Wendy involves her sitting in the kitchen at home looking after her son Danny, so immediately she takes on a domestic and familial role which she carries out for the rest of the film.
Now a counter argument for Wendy being the final girl is that she is very weak and frail and will be picked off first, but that is used to throw off the male audience as that is the predominant audience of horrors.
Even at the inn Wendy is doing all of the cooking, cleaning and keeping the inn in check and it is evident that she doesn't know how to defend herself properly because in the scene where Jack is threatening Wendy on the stairs she wields a baseball bat and lunges it at Jack. In no way in this film does she put herself in a vouyeristic situation as she covers herself up and doesn't show any sexual urges toward Jack. 


In Eden Lake, we see quite the opposite with Jennie almost throughout the entirety of the film, even when she is running away from Brett's group she wears a low cut dress and she is running and wet, but we do see a small part of familialism in the movie as Greg's plan in the film is to propose to Jennie and she does agree when he is near death so this is also another time when she shows a family role, we also see it when she clutches the boy that she killed and starts crying, she seems to be holding him like a son.


The interesting thing is that Jennie (we assume) dies from the family of the young boys whereas the more androgynous virginal females (Laurie and Wendy) who took on a family role in the entire film survive.

Role of the Distributor

UK Distributors obtain the films they release by:

·         A third party sale, the middle man from producers to the retailers.

·         A continuous flow of new content from a parent studio

·         A studio with a distributor that negotiates an output on covering the slate of titles.

When making/planning and/or organising a new film the distributor will look for something new, something that captivates them and they need to find a suitable and individual idea or hook in this plan for them to use.

Usually, a good idea is to keep the films’ local, British films for a U.K audience and U.K tales and stories.  One other thing that distributors look for is deliverance. Would the characters’ link to the audience, would the story grip he audience in the intended manner?

If the distributor doesn’t feel the film is right, then there is a very strong chance that the film won’t go any further, not even into the photography stage, preferably before production. They are to sign a contract or a formal agreement specifying the rights that they hold to the respect of the title, the rights to release into British cinemas and to promote it in all media forms.

When planning to release a film to the general public, a detailed understanding of the target audience (age, group, gender, area that they live, social networks, lifestyles and media consumption in that area). Another factor to take into understanding is rating.

“All classification decisions are based on the BBFC’s published and regularly updated Guidelines. The Guidelines are the product of extensive public consultation, research and the accumulated experience of the BBFC over many years. They reflect current views on film, DVD and video game regulation”. This is a quote from the BBFC website explaining that a lot of work goes into classifying a media product. So, the pre-production team may not be able to target the audience that they wanted to sometimes if the content is too much or frequent language.

There is a huge risk with making a film to broadcast in cinemas around the U.K. They need to check out rival companies bringing out films around the same date, do the other films have production values. Are there well-known actors? Is it directed by a big name director? Is it a spin-off from a famous television programme of book? Is their target audience vaster? If the films are released at same time they have to keep their fingers crossed and take chances.

Distribution planà Who? What? Where? When? Howà Strategies to motivate audienceàCreative-Media-Publicity-Promotions-Online-Partnerships.

To get and record audience feedback, distributors usually hold test screenings around the U.K, where they bring members of the general public to sit and write down what they like and don’t like about the film. At the end of a film the audience fill out questionnaires. After all, the most important factor for a film not to flop is the audience. So knowing what the audience do and don’t want to see will always put them ahead of the game.


http://www.launchingfilms.tv/marketing.php?video=2&autostart=1  <-----Click link to go to www.launchingfilms.com and to watch a video on film marketing.

Film posters are a huge way to get the public’s appetite for films going. Posters will have to appeal to the mass public by something that has the biggest star value to the film. Something that will capture the audience. Posters and Television are 70% of the advertising that used to get a film going. To get itself out there. Of course, it won’t be the only film with a big production value. Even if they have a new breakthrough of actors they will have to check the competition because other films may have bigger stars. A bigger budget which goes towards CGI and a more professional looking poster. Around £170 million is put into television and poster advertising alone.

A great example of a working film poster with production value. We all know that this is Woody from the Toy Story films and the fact that he is leaning on the letter 3 means that there will be a 3RD film which will get the general public talking, since Toy Story 2 came out in 1999 and was a popular movie to gross in the box office.

A good way to get the film out there is to hold a film premiere and bring all the stars of the film to the cinema. They are categorized as glamorous, expensive to hold and exclusive. Distributors hold these to get the red carpet interviews for prime time TV and photos for all the celebrity gossip magazines. Distributors will often put the sales form tickets to charity, which from this makes the ticket sales go up because it is all going to a good cause which then makes the film stand out because of its work.

Appealing to a younger audience is important for distributors for films, because the main audience that enter cinemas are 13-25. So spin off merchandise is very important, and it can be ANYTHING. Obvious items include:

·         DVD/Bluray

·         CD Soundtrack

·         T-Shirts

·         Toys for children

·         Video Games (Usually lower age rated films)

Some distributors often make their merchandise very unique, so that they have a selling point that no other film has. For example. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The limited edition DVD case smelt like chocolate. Also, Star Trek released air horns that whenever you pressed them down they would play the original Star Trek theme. Weird, but unique.

McDonalds and The Disney Store are great examples of synergy. The Happy Meal is targeted at a younger audience and to attract them to buying the meal more they include toys that are to do with a new children’s film that is released in the cinema. So distributors will search as wide as they can to get their new film out there. From specially made websites to toys in kid’s meals.

3 Horror Movie Trailers That Made Us Go...Cool. We'll Use That!

Devil: The Official Trailer

What Harry and I liked about this trailer is how the use of a match on action cut from the lift to the CCTV footage in the security room of the lift and how there is a quick flash of their dead bodies and blood on the walls.


The trailer had inter-titles but no voiceover, which we prefered as it didn't disrupt the music or the actor's dialogue which is vital to this trailer. It broke up what was happening so that suspense could be built and we could be drawn in.


A typical horror convention of this trailer is the setting. The claustrotophobic entrapment styled environment adds to the horror as we know that they can not escape easily without harming themselves.





The Hills Have Eyes: Official Trailer

What Harry and I liked about this film is the fact that this film didn't give much of the plot away, just so much that we know that this family are isolated in the middle of nowhere but they are not alone. The use of still frames edited together at speed to create a montage effect, it influences or views of the film to be terrifying and fast-paced.


A convention of this trailer is the fact the audience in the cinema are put into a voyueristic stand point. We see the young woman in a bikini and we zoom and bit closer into the shot where we just see her from the chest up and that it stills and fades out, also when we see the hand stroke the other woman's face and we witness that dead on, so that attracts the target audience which are mainly teenagers.


A Horror convention that is used in this trailer is the character types. We have the oldest man who does seem the main protaganist who we want to idolise with, we have the woman who is sexualised, the young boy who again we could idolise with.
Obviously we have these monsters, who we don't fully see, but we know that they are not 'normal'.













Sorority Row: Official Trailer


A convention of this film that Harry and I like would be the production value that this film will have for teenage boys. The trailer shows college girls wearing next to nothing, this appeals to a sexualised teenage audience.
The horror convention that we like in this film is the sound. We like the fact that they use real songs for the soundtrack and how the song is cheery when the situation definatly is not. This is a good use of a contrapuntal soundtrack This repeats with the song at the end, when it is girls are singing and clapping and it echos and gently gets quieter. This is a convention that we would like to create in our horror movie trailer.

Narrative Theorys in The Shining

This is Todorov's Theory on Narrative, he says that all stories start with an equillibrium, that is where all the opposing gorces are in balance. Relating this to "The Shining" I think this works very well. The equillibrium is that Jack gets the job at the hotel and the family move up there for 5 months.




The disruption/disequillbrium is inforced by an agent of change, we were unsure if this was Delbot Grady, Room 237 or The Hotel itself in the film but in my opinion I think Room 237 is the agent of change the first time around, it starts to make Jack go mad. The pathway to resolution in the film is a long pathway, Jack is asked to kill his family by Delbot which again makes him an agent of change as this wasn't Jack's intention. When he chops down the bathroom door we think it will be the death of Wendy but this gets interupted by the prescence of the Chef( and then he dies). There is a peak in the pathway where Danny and Jack are in the maze and Jack chases after Danny with an axe, we think that Danny may die but then the restoration of the equillibrium is when Danny and Wendy are free from Jack and when Jack dies.




Although the argument is that it dosn't fully resolve as we don't know if Sanny and Wendy survive the storm and when we zoom into the picture of Jack in 1921. Can Jack truly die? Will he come back again?












Vladimir Propp proposed that in most tales/stories there are 8 character roles, these are:






1. The Villain-Jack? Delbot?




2. The Hero-Danny




3. The Donor-(Provides The Hero with some magical item or property)-Tony




4. The Helper-(who aids The Hero)-Dick




5. The Princess-Wendy?








6. Princess's Father-N.A




7. The Dispatcher-The Hotel Owner




8.The False Hero-Jack



Claude Levi Strauss looked at binary opposites in the narrative structure. Binary oppisites are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of a media text. These were more analysed than other as they went more in depth. The ones that are present in The Shining are:


1. Good/Evil


2. Known/ Unknown


3.Life/Death


4. Known/Unknown


5.Present Life/Afterlife


6. Adult/Child


Bordwell and Thompson described narritave as a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occuring in time and space. We piece together what we see in a media text so that we try and understand the story better. For instance if we were to see a still of a man holding his face in his hands and then moved to another still of a dead body we would assume that the man then killed this person, if we then moved to another image of the man crying and then to a picture of him with his mother we would assume his mother has died. We try and find a casual effect between them. This technique is done using flashbacks, replays of action. slow motion, speeding up and jumping between places and times.


This is done in The Shining mainly in the part of where Danny is on his trike and he is out side Room 237, where Danny sees the twin girls form the "past" and it then flashes back to Danny becoming scared, we obviously assume that he is being terrified by these 2 girls and then when we flash quickly to them had being cut up and blood painting the walls, we then assume that they are dead and Danny is being haunted by beyond the grave. What we are unsure of is that Danny so far has only seen the future and been told the future by Tony we are unsure if that they are dead or that they are going to be killed, by who?





In my opinion I think Todorov's theorys nake more sense and apply to The Shining better than any other ones, because there is the disequilibrium and a pathway to resolution before that. There is a rise just before the ending and the resolvement to resolution where Jack kills Dick Halloran and then chases after Danny in the maze but then order is restored when they escape in the snow cat and Jack dies. Or does he? There is however one flaw in applying Todorov's theory to The Shining, do we know if Jack really dies as we zoom in onto the picture at the end of the film and do we know if Wendy and Danny escape and get back to civilization?

RETURN OF THE REPRESSED
Freud explained the use "Return of the Repressed" to describe the existence of neurotic symptoms.


The idea is that the mind will block out/push back a bad experience or memory and the human ego would stop it trying to come back. It would then arise dressed/disguised as a symptom.Repressed wishes are not destroyed in the unconscious rather, they are forever re-emerging in the form of what are generically called derivatives of the unconscious.


For example, a family with an only child are thinking of having another child, to the only child this is unbelievable, they have been the centre of his/her parent's world and now they attention they had received may well be passed onto the new child.
When the child is born and bought back to the family home the elder child must push back the anger of not being the only child that they push the feelings deep down so that they do not upset the parents by doing something unruly, but if the elder child were to be left home with an infant the feelings of anger could rise without anyone there to stop him. Hense why parents should never let a 3 year old stay with an infant. Eventually the elder may learn to love the his/her younger sibling and push the feelings way back down, but they anger is still there. Finding another way to release itself.

28 Days Later Trailer:
I like this trailer because of the cuts it uses, I doesn't give that much away but what it does show leaves wanting to know what is happening especially when you see the main character walking through a deserted London street with an overturned bus.
Another aspect of this trailer I like is the music that is played for it, it is eerie so that you can tell it is a horror film and it fits perfectly with the theme.
This is the sort of trailer that I would like to create to end up being my final piece, but without the explosions. The cuts and transactions are ideal.

The Fourth Kind Movie Trailer

The trailer for one of my favourite horror films, "The Fourth Kind".
The reason I uploaded this trailer was because I love the idea that it strikes you that this is based on actual events, that for me is what scares me the most, the idea that things that scare us are actually real.
This trailer gives infomation on what the film is about and how it correlates to the film but it doesn't give much away, it leaves you wanting more which is what I want to accomplish with my horror movie trailer.